Wednesday brought us two new actively managed ETFs that, in their own ways, perfectly encapsulate where we are in the market cycle. One is the logical conclusion of a three-decade obsession with a single stock. The other claims to have cracked the code on what retail investors want before they know they want it. Let's dive in.
Horizon Kinetics has launched the Texas ETF (TEXX), and if you've followed this firm for any length of time, your first question is probably: “Wait, they didn't already have one?”
For the uninitiated, Horizon Kinetics is the house that Texas Pacific Land built. Murray Stahl, the firm's CIO, sits on TPL's board. The firm owns roughly $2 billion worth of the stock. Multiple Kinetics mutual funds have had 50-60%+ weightings in TPL at various points. They buy shares almost daily. This isn't an investment thesis; it's a lifestyle.
So naturally, TEXX will focus on “Texas-based companies that benefit from abundant energy, land, and a favorable corporate legal structure.” If you're thinking that sounds like a very specific set of criteria that a certain Permian Basin royalty company might happen to meet, you're paying attention.
The timing is interesting. Per the press release, “Texas is becoming a center of gravity for large-scale data center/artificial intelligence operators, primarily due to the state's plentiful and inexpensive energy, land, and water.” This conveniently aligns with TPL's recent announcement of a partnership with Bolt Data & Energy to develop data center campuses on its West Texas land holdings.
They also note that the Texas Stock Exchange is launching in 2026. In case you needed another reason to be bullish on Texas. Or in case you needed an excuse to launch a Texas ETF in January 2026. Either way.
TEXX traded 687 shares on day one. This is either a very quiet launch or Murray Stahl is the only buyer and he's pacing himself.
Meanwhile, Defiance ETFs has partnered with Futurum Equities to launch the Retail Kings ETF (RKNG), which tracks “stocks where surging bullish retail investor participation is driving momentum, leadership, and price discovery.”
The pitch: retail investors aren't just market participants anymore – they're market movers. RKNG uses “proprietary retail sentiment intelligence” to identify where retail conviction is highest, then combines that with momentum scoring to build a 30-50 stock portfolio.
Sylvia Jablonski, Defiance's CIO, was very clear: “This is not a meme ETF. These are companies with real technology, real revenue, and real growth narratives.”
When you have to clarify that your ETF is not a meme ETF, you've already lost that particular battle. But let's engage with the thesis anyway.
The fund targets “artificial intelligence, semiconductors, space and defense, financial platforms, energy innovation, and advanced healthcare.” So: everything retail loves. NVIDIA. Palantir. Rocket Lab. The usual suspects. The insight here isn't what retail likes; it's supposedly identifying when retail conviction reaches critical mass, before institutions pile in.
Futurum's Shay Boloor put it this way: “We built RKNG to reflect how the real economy is being rebuilt right now, where AI, energy, defense, healthcare & space infrastructure are converging.”
RKNG traded 33,480 shares on day one and was up 2.92% after hours. So, either the retail sentiment algorithm works, or retail investors really like buying ETFs that promise to identify what retail investors like. A beautiful closed loop.
These two funds represent polar opposite approaches to the same problem: how do you generate alpha in a market that's increasingly efficient?
TEXX says: go deep on a single geography with structural advantages, hold forever, and ignore the index. It's the logical extension of Horizon Kinetics' entire philosophy – own royalty companies and things that benefit from real assets, hold through everything, and let time do the work.
RKNG says: follow the retail herd but get there first. If markets are increasingly driven by coordination among individual investors (Redditors, FinTwit, Discord), then the alpha is in reading those tea leaves better than the next guy.
One is a bet on Texas. The other is a bet on the GameStop-ification of markets being permanent.
Both launched the same day. Both are actively managed. Both cost more than a vanilla index fund. And both are essentially saying the same thing: passive indexing leaves money on the table if you know where to look.
Whether that's in the Permian Basin or in the collective id of r/wallstreetbets is, apparently, a matter of personal preference.